Summer Party Series: Part 3

Be sure to catch up on parts one and two if you missed them. Today, I thought you all deserved an update on how the party went. Overall, I’m pleased to say that I thought it was a huge success… And I think there are three reasons why.

The first, I believe, is due to the planning. As I suggested in part two of this series, I prepared the food, drinks, bathrooms, and decor well in advance. This allowed me to deal with last-minute issues without being crunched for time. I love it when planning works out!

The second reason the party was successful was due, in part, to Kleenex Hand Towels. And I promise I’m not just saying that because they are sponsoring this series… I say that because I might deserve the worst mom ever award for last week’s escapades. Long story short (because I’m never long winded, right?!?) – my boys caught a stomach virus at church last weekend. All Sunday night was spent, well, you know… By Monday afternoon, however, they were symptom free. No vomit. No fever. Nothing. So we continued with our plans to have our little party on Tuesday night. No problem, right?

Wrong. Both boys continued to seem well all night Monday. All day Tuesday. All evening Tuesday at the party. But Tuesday, right after the last guest went home, the vomiting started again. And continued until Thursday. Ugh. Please tell me I’m not the only mother who has exposed others to my sick children unintentionally?

Anyway, as you can imagine, I felt guilty for the next few days, worrying that I would get phone calls from friends telling me that they had come down with the stomach flu after being at my house Tuesday night. But you know what? No one else got sick. Not even one. Not even the other little children. By disinfecting everything I could (which I had done Monday in a desperate attempt to keep from getting sick myself) and using Kleenex Hand Towels at the party to reduce the spread of germs, we managed to keep from infecting our guests.

That may be one of those TMI stories, but let’s be honest, it’s part of having kids, right?

Which brings us to my third reason for success that evening: I managed to keep the main things the main things. Littler Pax may have destroyed the flowers that afternoon…

We may have had a few extra guests (the more the merrier!!) and run out of matching paper plates…

And brisket…

But everyone had fun. Happy adults:

And happy children:

And that, my friends, is what summer’s about. It may not be a Pinterest-perfect party, but good barbecue, good conversation, good friends, good fun… Can’t go wrong.

How about you? Have you had some fun get togethers this summer? I’d love to hear about them!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

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